West Bridge Journals

How to turn a 15 minute project into a 3 hour ordeal.

The other morning there was no hot water and I had to take a cold shower. Afterwards I checked to see if the breaker was tripped and it wasn’t, so I knew it was the heating element. I told BJ that I would stop by Lowes on the way home and pick up one and install it that afternoon. No big deal, I mean after all it will only take about 15 minutes. What with my many years experience working in maintenance and construction, I am no novice at this, so I take a little offence when BJ suggested that maybe we should call a plumber.

I gently reminded her how handy I am and all the buildings I built along with all my maintenance experience, to which she replied that, sometimes things just happen to you. I asked like what and she said, “you know, things like what happen when you installed the refrigerator and the dishwasher.”

Well, after thanking her for her confidence in me, I am now more determined than ever to make this my finest example of home improvement. So I now begin.

I turn off the breaker for safety, then the water. I hook up the water hose to the faucet at the bottom of the tank and run it outside to drain the water in the tank. After turning it on I then pulled up on the relief valve to let air into the tank to speed up the draining. After a few minutes the water stopped flowing. I proceeded to take out the heating element. But wouldn’t you know it, it will not budge. I put a pull bar on my wrench and put all my weight into it, but to no avail. It was like the element was welded to the heater. The only thing left to do was go get the air compressor and impact wrench. Even then the heating element all but stalled out the wrench, but I kept on until it finally broke loose.

Not only did it break loose, but it broke off leaving the electrode in the tank! There was so much calcium built up in the bottom of the tank that it froze the electrode. That was only the beginning of my trouble. What I did not realize was the calcium stopped up the faucet and that stopped the water flow. So, when the element came off, the water came out. All 30 plus gallons that was left after the so called draining.

I yelled for BJ to bring me some towels. Lots of towels. In fact bring me all the towels we have, which she did along with bed sheets, after which she went back into the living room to finish watching the Olympics. Along with the towels and shop vacuum, I finally get all the water up. After another couple of hours of removing the calcium and the broken element from the tank, I finish my repair and we have hot water again, three hours after I started.

In order to repay BJ for that, “you should have called a plumber,” look on her face, I left her a bath tub full of wet towels and bed sheets for her.

Now I know that some of you men out there would ask why didn’t you just re-plug the hole, till you could get something to catch the water. Well, in the words of my lovely wife, “Sometimes things just happen to me.”